Philippines Day 4: It Starts Getting Really Good

I woke up and headed seven steps outside my door to the outdoor resort restaurant/bar/cafe type thing for 'breakfast' at around 12:30pm. As I was sitting there enjoying my American breakfast, these two guys sitting near me were trying to ask for mustard and the waitresses were not understanding what they wanted. So since I am am ever-helpful, and a friendly Texan, I took the menu and pointed out the mustard on the hotdog pictured there. The guys teased me about eavesdropping, and we struck up a conversation. The restaurant had no mustard on hand, by the way. (Weird sidenote: I realized I now have an aversion to mustard because Marcus is extremely allergic to it. Seriously, it was a tiny internal struggle to actually help anyone acquire this condiment.)

Turns out these guys are Swedish, Daniel and Klas, and they are my next door neighbors here at Alice in Wonderland. They teach English in Vietnam, and speak at least 3 languages (Swedish, English, and German) fluently. They're really great! And this is EXACTLY what I needed, some people to hang out with who were non-threatening and cool. Perfect. We ended up hanging out the whole day at the cafe and then at the beach, and then going out to a dance club together at night.

The club was a place called Cocomangas, which incidentally was a suggestion given to me by a friend of a friend who lives in Manila, so it was double-stamped as a good place to go. There were so many Koreans at Cocomangas dancing that I felt right at home. It really made me smile.

I went up to a table of what I thought were Koreans, and asked "Korea?" (again, I am just so friendly), but it turns out they were from Taiwan. So of course, I'm like "My best friend Sarah is from Taiwan!" and we cheers-ed to Taiwan. Or to Sarah, I'm not sure which, but I know we made a connection.

The clubs were a blast, and because I sometimes become the Fun Police (as in, if someone doesn't seem like they are having enough fun or "dancing hard enough", I'll either go up to them or catch their eye and make a gesture like, come on dude, have fun, dance!) I think everybody else had a good time too. And it was really good to feel like I had someone looking out for me, even if I hadn't known them a day ago. THIS is exactly how I had hoped (and known) the trip would go. And it was only Thursday.